A model independent observation of the string effect using quark tagging at LEP

Abstract Quark and gluon in 3-jet events from hadronic Z 0 decays are identified through use of the semi-leptonic decays of charm and bottom quarks. This tagging method allows geometrically symmetric or transposed configurations of the quark and gluon jets to be selected, permitting a study of the asymmetry in the population of particles in the regions between jets, commonly called the string effect, which avoids restrictions present in previous studies. In particular, our demonstration of a population asymmetry is performed without use of a model. Our results imply that dynamical differences exist between quarks and gluons or between quark-antiquark and quark-gluon jet systems with respect to their particle production properties.